Page 160 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

“I need to return to Kuda Varai. You don’t know how—”

“I said I understand.”

Vaara opened his mouth to speak again, then closed it.

“I guess this is it, then,” she said with a shrug.

This wasn’t how he’d hoped this would go. But it was how things had to be. “Yes.”

“Goodbye, then.”

There were other things he had wanted to say to her. But suddenly it didn’t feel like she wanted to hear any of those things. That was probably for the best.

“Goodbye.”

Crow waited half a moment, as if still hoping he might change his mind at the last second. Then she gave them all a terse nod, turned, and started down the street.

Vaara watched her until she turned around a corner and disappeared.

He thought of her alone in that big empty house, with only bad memories for company. It was not the life he wanted for her. She deserved better.

But she would be all right. That was what he kept telling himself. She had survived much worse.

The invisible wound in his chest ached. But he had survived worse, too.

He turned to Aruna and Novikke. Aruna was giving him that disapproving look again. Vaara ignored it.

“Does that offer to help me get to Kuda Varai still stand?”he asked.

“Yes,”Aruna said. “If that’s what you feel is best.”

“Can we leave tomorrow?”

“In a hurry?”

“There’s no sense in delaying,”Vaara said. “There’s nothing else here for me.”

Belatedly, he realized he was still wearing Crow’s scarf. He looked around to make sure there was no one else on the street, then unwound it from his face. It was stained with mud and blood, and some of the stitching on the leaves was coming apart.

He could have run after her to return it. Or he could have just tossed it aside on the street, since it was so worn and stained anyway. It was probably best if he didn’t keep something that reminded him of her.

But in the end, he wrapped it around his face again, securing it with a loose knot to be sure he wouldn’t lose it.

Chapter 43

Crow crossed the city in silence. The busy streets were mere background noise around her. No one looked at her. No one spoke to her. She was invisible again, and alone, separate from it all as she climbed the slope to Patros’s house on the hill.

In the past few days, she had begun to fantasize about living here with Vaara, thinking about what it would be like to wake up in bed beside him every day.

She’d imagined how he might spend his days with her. He could have read in the most comfortable chair in the house—the big one by the window upstairs—or practiced swordplay in the private garden in the back, or just done mundane things with her, like cooking or cleaning, and enjoyed them simply because they were doing them together. She had already thought of things she might have shown him in the city—her favorite parts of Valtos, which he would have secretly loved even while he pretended disinterest.

She’d never really thought any of those things would happen. They were foolish ideas. But somehow, those images had been all she could think about on their way back from the prison. She’d tried to push them from her mind, and they kept coming back.

She crossed through the withering garden in front of the house and went inside.

It was dark and still. She could smell the dust in the air, and she noted out of habit, in the back of her mind, that it had been too long since she’d cleaned. Several windows were broken and muddy footprints were tracked across the floor from when Alexei and his people had crashed through the house.

This place was all she had now.

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